Remember the news about Life in a Day, the YouTube movie that Ridley Scott is producing with director Kevin Macdonald? (Not to be confused with Bruce McDonald, who also crowd-sourced footage for his Broken Social Scene projectThis Film is Broken.)

Well, the movie is already into post-production, but that’s just because all the normal production work was done by people who submitted clips from footage shot on July 24, the day the film is designed to encapsulate. How many clips? Eighty thousand, in 45 languages from 197 different countries. How do you assemble that? Read More »

We’ve got a pair of vaguely conjoined stories about trouble in movie sales. Just as Blockbuster is looking at options to keep its business viable and thriving, another movie rental chain is dying: Movie Gallery will close all stores in the US and liquidate all holdings. Meanwhile, over on the Internet, YouTube launched a movie rental service, and no one seems to have noticed. Read More »

In this week’s episode of the /Filmcast, David Chen, Devindra Hardawar, and Adam Quigley discuss the art of the new Wall Street teaser, reflect on the business of indie cinema, and offer some of their favorite films and disappointments from Sundance 2010. Special guest Steve Weintraub (AKA Frosty) from Collider joins us this evening.

You can always e-mail us at slashfilmcast(AT)gmail(DOT)com, or call and leave a voicemail at 781-583-1993. Join us next week on Monday night at 9 PM EST / 6 PM PST at Slashfilm’s live page as we review From Paris with Love.

We knew that video rentals were coming to YouTube at some point. Back in September, we reported that YouTube was chatting with movie studios about renting films. Now it seems they’re going to dabble in renting some independent films before they move on to big studio fair. On their blog today, YouTube announced that they will be making five Sundance 2009 and 2010 films films available for rent from this Friday until Sunday, January 31.

The films include the much-praised doc The Cove, One Too Many Mornings, Homewrecker, Children of Invention, and Bass Ackwards. YouTube also mentioned that rental videos from industries like health and education, as well as more independent films, will be made available in the coming weeks.

You can always e-mail us at slashfilmcast(AT)gmail(DOT)com, or call and leave a voicemail at 781-583-1993. Join us next Monday at 9 PM EST / 6 PM PST at Slashfilm’s live page as we review Shane Acker’s 9.

According to TheWall Street Journal, Youtube is in discussions with major movie studios about the possibility of renting movies through its online streaming video service. Youtube’s capacity to be a profitable enterprise has long been a source of much debate. With this success of services like Hulu, which is currently able to command top dollar for its ads, Youtube is clearly trying to expand its monetization options by exploring premium content. The WSJ story is hazy on the details, since talks are still ongoing and could easily fall apart, but hit the jump for what we do know.

Following up on our previous news regarding Monty Python material on iTunes, Mashable is now reporting on a staggering increase of Monty Python DVDs sold on Amazon soon after the Python crew made some of their their more popular material free on Youtube. And by staggering, I mean 23,000% worth. Mashable notes that Monty Python’s DVDs climbed to the #2 spot on Amazon’s Movie’s and TV Bestseller List, and you don’t have to be a genius to follow that the sales were probably influenced by the Amazon links found on all of their Youtube clips.

When launching their massive Youtube effort, Monty Python made their intentions fairly clear:

“We’re letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there! But we want something in return. None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.”